Providing successful medical care is highly dependent on the skill of health care professionals in correctly selecting and performing medical procedures and the timeliness of performing the procedures. Currently, surgeons must perform increasingly complex procedures through progressively smaller openings in their patient's bodies while incurring the lowest possible incidence of complications and side effects. The exponential growth of medical knowledge and the rapid development and deployment of new therapeutic technologies intensify these demands. These developments constitute a constantly changing standard of care in the treatment of specific conditions from which the surgeon must rapidly choose the optimal care for a given patient during a surgical procedure. These decisions must be made within the financial context of a typical hospital experiencing tighter fiscal restraints and managed and staffed by employees experiencing rapid turnovers. In such a financial context, an experienced surgeon supported by experienced technicians is a rare combination. Yet, regardless of the staff and resource support, each patient expects optimal quality and results. Accordingly, surgeons are pressured to reduce the cost of their interventions and maximize the number of patients they see. As a result, some surgeons may have sufficient time to familiarize themselves with either complex surgical devices and the specific anatomy of the patient, and to keep up with every change in medical therapeutics as it occurs.
The challenge of providing successful medical care is further magnified in hospital emergency departments. Whereas most surgical interventions may be at least partially planned, interventions and interactions in the emergency department are completely dependent on the trauma that has occurred to the incoming patient. The emergency room (ER) care professionals may be confronted with a massive head injury, a simple laceration, a fractured bone, or massive internal bleeding. Although, ER care professionals are trained to triage these injuries to appropriate specialists, in certain situations, the appropriate specialists are not available. For instance, many rural hospitals are unable to staff a variety of specialists. Similarly, such a variety specialists are generally not present in battlefields. In these situations, the ER care professionals are unable to rely on a staffed specialist and must develop a complete diagnosis of the injuries received, and in many instances institute treatment. Where the injuries suffered by the patient are complex, the survival of the patient may ultimately hinge on a consultation with an expert specialist.
One prevalent cause of such complex injuries is motor vehicle crashes (MVCs). Particularly, MVCs are a major cause of traumatic brain injuries in persons ages 5-64 (Traumatic Brain Injury and Outcomes Associated with Motor Vehicle Crashes. University of Maryland CIREN Center. http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot/gov/pdf/nrd-50/ciren/2004/1104Maryland.pdf). However, the majority of MVCs occur in rural areas and such rural crashes are generally more serve and result in greater injury than urban crashes (Contrasting Rural and Urban Fatal Crashes 1994-2003. NHTSA. December 2005. p I.). Thus, although expert specialists may be necessary for managing the complex injuries resulting from MVCs, the appropriate expert specialists may not be available for the majority of such injuries.
Even in situations where the assistance of expert specialists may be available, such assistance is untimely and thereby ineffective. Particularly, reliable assistance generally requires the ER care professional to contact and schedule a consultation with the appropriate specialist. In scheduling such a consultation, the ER care professional must attend to procedures required to uphold the patient's privacy rights. The delay resulting from properly acquiring of the assistance limits patient's recovery. For many complex trauma injuries, a short period of time, referred to as the “magic hour”, exists after the injury where prompt resuscitation is critical to the patient's recovery, and in which secondary injuries, if allowed to occur, can be devastating to the patient's recovery. Thus, a need exists for a system and method which allows a local healthcare professional to promptly and securely communicate with a remote healthcare professional.